The Western Horizon
by ricochette
Summary: Mara Dixon heads to Colorado for a breath of fresh air. Little did she know what her new job would entail. Cameron Mitchell/OC. Please review.


**Author's Note: **This story came out of nowhere, as I was writing randomly. All that being said, I've decided to grace you all with my take on a Cameron/OC fic. I've always loved the idea of a Cameron/OC fic, but there don't seem to be many of them here. I currently do not have a Beta so all errors are proudly my own. Please review and let me know what you think of my story. This is my first SG-1 fic.

**Disclaimer**: Mara Dixon is entirely my own creation – as are any characters, events, and ideas not found within the Stargate franchise. Aside from that, I own nothing else.

**I.**

"Did you ever think you'd like to travel a long way off… as far and as high as the moon…and stay there for good… forever…and forget about all things down here?"

Julie Ann Winslow, _Colorado Territory _

**Colorado. 2005.**

The cherry bobbed in Mara's sangria as she sat on the wicker rocking chair on her porch – her daddy's porch. It stood as a testament to the ambition and will of man, working by himself against the elements only rising each day to see a project become complete. It was a monument to the Colorado sunset, which painted the sky most beautifully on a clear summer evening.

But her daddy wasn't there anymore. Things were different.

Growing up is hard, she was always told. It's harder when you throw away calendar after calendar as the years pass by and thirty five stares you down. Things were easier at twenty. At twenty five, 'old' was meaningless. At thirty, was that a gray hair? No, it wasn't. You think too much. At thirty four, thirty five was only a stroll around the corner. And thirty five was coming up fast.

At thirty four, Mara sat on the porch of the house she inherited. She wondered why she didn't sell the house when she heard of her father's passing – she was, after all, the sole recipient of the house and she would have earned a pretty good profit. She could have stayed in New York City. Mara had a very good job – which she had worked so damned hard for when she got out of Columbia. She had slaved away, spending hours in the office, only to realize, upon her father's passing, that it had all been in vain… because she realized that she barely knew her father, save for his face in a few photographs… and it scared the living daylights out of her.

And at that point, Mara realized she was alone in the world. With no mother and no other family to speak of, she was alone. She had a few relationships back in college, but they never amounted to anything worth telling her mother about. And then, when she was in the middle of her junior year, her mother died. And that was that.

Angie Dixon had only been fifty when she died – the doing of a man who'd lost it all in the stock market driving home drunk from a bar in Westchester County, New York. Though it had been over ten years ago, Mara remembered it as if it was yesterday. The phone call while she was going for a jog in Central Park… the long and expensive taxi ride home… seeing her father for the first time in three years… seeing the casket lowered into the ground… feeling mortal for the first time.

People die, she realized. People are born, they live, and they die. Maybe they leave a few things behind worth mentioning. As Mara sat on her Colorado porch running through her thoughts, she lit a cigarette. She had promised herself that she'd quit, but that had been two years ago. She was never the pack a day type of woman; it was more like a pack every two to three weeks whenever she needed her fix. The smell of the cigarette smoke put her at ease as she reached for her sangria to take another sip.

Her father was a Brigadier General in the Air Force, but she never really kept up with that. He fought in Vietnam, participated in various operations which she would never the details of, and logged in an impressive number of hours in enemy airspace in Desert Storm. The last she heard, he had been stationed at McMurdo in Antarctica, of all places. Again, things she knew of only in passing. Matthew and Angie Dixon had been separated for years. Matthew chalked it up to Angie being overly emotional, whereas Angie couldn't damn well take any more black ops, months away from home, and the silence. So… she left, taking Mara with her, and went to live near her family in New York.

Matthew and Angie were gone, though.

Mara heard of her father's death from the military. A man in a spiffy blue uniform showed up at her apartment a few weeks prior. She was incredibly surprised to see the man in dress blues before her – holding nothing but a letter. A letter that was marked 'URGENT'. Mara tore the letter open and scanned it for words that stood out. _Mara Dixon… Colorado… Urgent… Presence needed as sole survivor of the honorable Brigadier General Matthew Dixon…_ Sole survivor. The words screamed at her. Sole survivor indeed.

Maybe it was his rank… hell, maybe it was the fact that she knew little about him other than his rank and his job… Mara found herself quitting her job in New York and staying out in Colorado. Her friends from the city thought she was crazy; they thought she had been hit a little too hard by her estranged father's death.

She applied for a job as an historian within the Air Force – with a graduate degree in history, it was the only job within the Air Force that actually made sense. She didn't do it because she wanted to serve her country. She did it because she wanted to get closer to the memory of her father in whichever way she could. It was foolish, she told herself, but it proved to be a welcome change of pace.

Her application was accepted, much to her relief, within a matter of days. A man in an Air Force uniform – a sight Mara was now growing accustomed to – appeared at her front door and handed her a letter. That had been last week. The letter was formal yet incredibly vague, only telling her where she was to report and what she should bring with her.

And that was how Mara Dixon found herself at her late daddy's house in Colorado, sitting on her porch on a sleepy Sunday evening – with a lipstick stained cigarette between her lips and holding a glass of sweet sangria in her right hand. Mara's dark blue eyes were wide, as she looked over the land that surrounded her house. Tomorrow would be a new day, she told herself. It held the promise of a new day, a new future… a new life. Common ground, she reasoned, that she could share with her father – even if he was no longer with her.

As the sun continued to set over the Colorado sky painting the mountains hues of orange and red, Mara sat calmly in her rocking chair presiding over her property. Mara took another drag from her slim cigarette and sat up straight.

"Things will be different." She said quietly, as she picked up her empty glass and retreated into her house.

&&&&

Cameron Mitchell looked General Landry square in the eye with a sense of disbelief.

"We're going to have… an historian… running around the base?" Mitchell stared the General down.

"Dr. Dixon will be filling an important position here at the SGC, Mitchell. And," Landry leaned across his desk as he said this, "I need not remind you that every other Air Force base on this planet has at least one historian on its payroll."

"For _what_ purpose?"

"To write the damned history!" General Landry snapped. He pulled out a file for Dr. Dixon opened it, pulling out the description of duties attributed to an Air Force historian. "Hmmm, let's see." Landry went down the list of duties and picked out a few to drive the point home to Mitchell. "Compile perishable information such as combat records, data… conduct post-combat interviews… document significant achievements… prepare studies… etcetera, etcetera… And, this is a big one, believe it or not – creating an office record of the unit's accomplishments…"

"For _who _to read?!" Mitchell asked incredulously.

"The Air Force and the IOA think that's besides point, Colonel."

"Well, did the IOA see any reason to accept our request for more Marines and Airmen to deal with the Ori threat?"

"Rome wasn't built in a day, Colonel." General Landry said with an amused look. "For now, you've got an historian. At least that's something."

"As long as it involves record keeping, consider the IOA on board..." Mitchell said sarcastically.

"Well, Colonel, consider it a comfort." Mitchell raised an eyebrow as he heard Landry's words. "It's good to know you can always count on something, eh?"

Mitchell shot Landry a smirk and rose from his seat.

"Dr. Dixon will start at the SGC tomorrow." Landry placed Mara's file on his desk. "I am sure the good doctor will be a useful addition to our _fine_ facility."

"Sure thing, General." Mitchell nodded as he walked out of General Landry's office.

Cameron rolled his eyes as he walked down one of the SGC's many hallways. Another new PhD at the SGC wasn't on the list of things he was particularly interested in dealing with. Cameron was assuaged only by the prospect of leaving the base – he had dealt with a lot in the past week and wanted nothing more than to unwind at his condo before coming back to deal with it all over again tomorrow.

He wondered, briefly, whether he would order Indian food or pizza. _Chicken tikka with jasmine rice… and a beer…_ he thought to himself with a slight smirk. It had been a damned long week, and this would be the perfect way to unwind. He wondered whether or not he should order a film On Demand or watch an old movie that he already had lying around his condo… _Back to the Fut—_

"UNSCHEDULED OFFWORLD ACTIVATION!" The PA system brought him back to reality. "COLONEL MITCHELL PLEASE REPORT TO THE GATE ROOM IMMEDIATELY!"

"Damn it!" Colonel Mitchell shouted as he kicked the wall he stood next to. "Not even one damned night!"

And while Mara Dixon sat in front of her television watching Seinfeld re-runs and eating chocolate Hagen Dazs out of the carton, Cameron Mitchell was running towards a Stargate and away from the night of relaxation that he was so desperately in search of.

It was going to be a long week.


End file.
